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Well if 90% of the revenue goes to the musicians then I doubt he'll be going through any of the major protection rackets and sticking to smaller/indie stuff. Otherwise there would be no way to guarantee that percent going to them.

A technology that challenges the recording industry's firm grim on paying people to make music? A system that gives artists a big cut of the revenue made by monetizing their music? Something that might actually change revenue models? The lawsuits will not stop until this is dead and buried.

The Big Names are all signed with a label already, but all is not lost. One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom. The vast majority of it will be utter crap, of course - but there is potentially a great deal of it, so all you need is a good recormendation and social networking engine that can filter out the good stuff from the rest, and ensure only the former ever makes the front page.

One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom. The vast majority of it will be utter crap, of course - but there is potentially a great deal of it, so all you need is a good recormendation and social networking engine that can filter out the good stuff from the rest, and ensure only the former ever makes the front page.

That's almost exactly what the original www.mp3.com was (circa 1998), and it was awesome. It was a very sad day when they were purchased / taken over / whatever and turned into a crap site.

You make the mistake of thinking that people decide what is good. That is now how the music industry works. The cartel tells the people what is good, and they buy it. How will people know what to recommend as good if they do not hear it on the radio and see the cute band members on TV?

Easy: Dotcom makes his money taking payments from people to promote certain artists on the site... he than runs his own promotional gig ensuring those artists show up more often in people's searches, and provides them with kickbacks/extra tools to promote themselves on youtube/facebook/etc.

Seems like it might actually work, although it'll eventually end up in the same situation as the present cartel, just with new owners.

It is provided by the ABC, our state-owned media broadcaster, as part of their youth radio network Triple J. It is a fantastic service. I've gotten a lot of free music from them and exposure to really awesome bands.

Did the recording industry go after IUMA? Honestly I wasn't paying attention. If not, maybe the record labels will laugh it off until such time they decide it's the reason the new Micky Minaje album didn't sell.

A real artist would not sign a deal with an aggregator. You need a respectful label that is promoting, protecting and licensing your music. Megabox is supposed to be an answer to any of this?

The problem is, the 'big label' is farming out the promotion, distribution, and licensing of the real artists to wholey owned subsidies so that the label only shows losses on paper while the subsidiaries, doing business only with each other until it gets to the wholesalers, make the money while driving prices up for maximum profit. For protection, the labels turn to the lawyers, who have the label as their clients, not the artists. If some piece of litigation ends up being good for the artist, that's all

A technology that challenges the recording industry's firm grim on paying people to make music? A system that gives artists a big cut of the revenue made by monetizing their music? Something that might actually change revenue models? The lawsuits will not stop until this is dead and buried.

> When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

Region restriction was the final straw that drove me to start downloading music in the first place. Until that time I was buying music from iTunes and (grudgingly) accepting DRM. Not being able to buy music I wanted because I lived in the wrong place was the end of my forbearance.

the end of an era. As the **aa continue to hack and slash at the hydra of new media, to chase the proverbial 'ali' around the ring in rope-a-dope fashion, artists will embrace it as a closer connection to their fans and a more reasonable approach to selling their art.

The legacy of an era of rented music and anti piracy legislation, DRM and house-raids will end with the sound of a single coin rattling in a tin cup as so many artists shun the industry that has ruled over them like cattle.

And heres a fancy dream: An open source appliance that can replace a jukebox in my favourite pub, that willingly connects to a DotCom enterprise and allows me to reward artists in realtime using bitcoin or cash for their efforts. But alas, its fun to dream.

An open source appliance that [...] allows me to reward artists in realtime using bitcoin or cash for their efforts.

You had me up until BitCoin.

If you prefer a currency backed by taxation (e.g. USD) rather than cryptography (e.g. BTC), all you need to do is turn off Bitcoin support in your appliance and accept that a larger percentage of your smaller donations will go to the payment processors to pay transaction fees.

The same thing was said when blank cassette tapes were made available for public purchase, and this argument was brought up again when blank CDs were made available for public purchase. Yet miraculously the music industry still continues to exist, and bands still go the traditional route of signing to big labels.

You are of the mistaken impression that record labels actually produce music, or musical artists. They don't.

**AA and all the runty labels that bow before them haven't cared about music in many many years. They craft drama inducing characters involved in intertwined story lines of good looking people (for various definitions of good looking) loosely framed by their supposed ability to sing and play musical instruments (or just their ability to talk, in the case of rappers). Can a few of them actually sin

In this analogy, what's the more authentic alternative to pro wrestling promotions like WWE and TNA that will allow wrestlers to "(eventually) earn a decent wage"? Let me guess: you're thinking of the MMA circuit.

Late on the reply here, but my analogy was more about the insipid and false nature of things. Neither the music produced by the **AA nor the death defying stunts performed in a ring are real. Fake, staged, rigged, dolled up to look real, but not real. Do you think wrestler A is REALLY hitting wrestler B with a steel chair at full swing? Or even really punching each other? Not a chance. Likewise, do you really think pop music stars actually sing their own songs, play their instruments or hit half the n

The assumption your post (and DotCom) make is that the artists want to be separated from their labels. Smaller artists who haven't/can't break through, they'll try it. Long time established artists who feel controlled by their label, may embrace it. But for the many artists who have groomed and marketed by their label because they are marketable, they'll stay put to have their albums pushed on the radio stations, their images splattered all over various media, and their various merchandising adventures hype

Personally I don't care about these The Monkees copies a bit - why would I? Big labels can keep them for what I care, but *if* substantial number of real artists went from them to modern alternatives, like this could be, and most new artists would not even sign with big labels - well, that would be a truly great thing for people into real music:)

It'll happen sooner or later, the destruction of dinosaur business model the big labels depend on to remain big... I still hope there will be some market for obtai

It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology. If someone was challenged by a USB drive, or multiple email attachments, I'd sent them the megaupload link and say "download it here."

This was generally for non-sensitive information shared with a large decentralized group working on both for-profit and non-profit products. When does the internet get a new anarchy file host, where no one cares what you upload and they keep it around if it's popular?

your preferred list of sites with the word "file" or "upload" in them have either click-through ads or captcha or 30-60 second wait times or all three. why would anyone prefer them over dropbox or google drive?

For one thing, SkyDrive is tied to a Microsoft account. According to "Prohibited Uses" in the Code of Conduct for a Microsoft account [microsoft.com], all drawings of cartoon characters must be clothed. Arthur Read and Simon Seville are OK, but Tigger and Spyro are not.

For another, "Your computer doesn't support the free SkyDrive app". Apparently, the only Linux distribution it supports is Android, and my laptop runs something based on Debian. I signed into the web version with my Hotmail account, and I got a confusing

It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology.

There are many competitors in that area, and more convenient, too. Dropbox is my weapon of choice, and it integrates with the filesystem. How much more convenient than "cp MyFile.zip ~/Dropbox/public/" can you get? (or drag&drop for those who don't like consoles).

It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology. If someone was challenged by a USB drive, or multiple email attachments, I'd sent them the megaupload link and say "download it here."

I miss it for the illegal uses also. For example there were lot's of manga scanlations available on megaupload. Scanlation is fan-based translation of japanese manga. Now when megaupload is gone, those files are wery hard or imposible to track elsewhere. With no official (legal) english translation available, those manga series are effectively lost to me.

I'll be very surprised if the business model won't be similar to GrooveShark's - in which case you'd only get the 90% of 0.01 cents if you went into an agreement with with the service. Otherwise you'll be advised to talk to your legal team about drafting formal complaints about URLs leading to the infringed work. And then you get to do that over and over again as the work just gets re-uploaded by the users. So, you see, either you spend a lot of money on legal complaints, or you just let things be and ge

Build it from ground out so it is protected from 'legal' harassment from the MAFIAA and the US law enforcement authorities who think they own the world, and be sure to place servers etc. so they're completely unreachable and untouchable from those points of view. They should be well-conected network-wise of course and not hide that even the pirates are welcome to share files here.

After all, sharing cam-recordings or various rips just might not be illegal at all if the creator releases th

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that this sounds suspiciously like the business model of Radio. It will be interesting to see if they have the ability to keep track of where to send all the checks, unless they have a very small playlist.

According to German IT news site heise.de[1] , to get the free music, users have to install a "megakey"-software on their computers, which acts like an ad-blocker for your browser, but instead of just blocking ads on websites, it will replace 15% of ads with Megabox ads.